A Sound Outlook for To-day and a Genuine Hope for the Future

Schmidt Number: S-3543

On-line since: 31st March, 2010

Lecture 7

Problems of the Time (II)

Berlin, August 6, 1918

You will have
seen in the last lecture that efforts were directed towards
presenting certain conceptions (which we can make our own out
of Spiritual Science), in such a way that they can be of
service to us in grasping what surrounds us, daily and
hourly, in present-day civilisation. If We want to add yet
another to these considerations, as a final one, it can be
summed up only thus: significant characteristics of our
present time have been selected and brought into connection
in various ways with what has sounded forth as the keynote of
these studies.

If we determine
to keep in mind what seems to stand out particularly in our
time, we shall find that of all the limiting and hindering
factors to-day, the worst is that the mode of thought and
comprehension evolved during the recent centuries leads men
to have little foresight of coming events. This is shown by
the fact that most events come as a surprise, in the most
curious way, and it is quite impossible to gain credence for
anything that is foreseen. It is considered inevitable that
remarkable events should take people by surprise. Speak of
what is to come, and people are astonished , or they make
ironical remarks about the apparent longing for some sort of
prophecy. Suppose that anyone wished to call attention to
conclusions such as may result from hypotheses like those we
have lately brought forward here — for instance, what
now looms over the world from the Far East — he would
at present encounter little understanding or belief, although
the fact already throws its shadow all too clearly before it.
Far too little need is felt for a clear view into things.
Connected with this is man's disinclination to admit the
truths which, within the only circles open to them, point to
future events.

Of course there
is no question here of any kind of “soothsaying”;
or of any sort of prophecy in the bad sense, but always an
earnest, scientific method of thought and conviction derived
from Spiritual Science. If we wish to ruminate upon the
causes of this trend of the present day characteristic just
mentioned, we may perhaps have to go far afield for them. Man
as a rule is absolutely unconscious how far the
causes of the thing lie from what appears as its effects . He
generally looks for the causes much too near at hand.

If we are to
look for causes of what has just been described, they must be
sought in a tendency deeply ingrained in the human soul at
the present time — a tendency towards dead conceptions
and ideas devoid of life and vigor. It should be
comprehensible that to think of the future, the imminent,
with the same ideas as on the past, the determined, is
impossible; but at the present time, value is attached only
to what, in the current phrase can be “proved”
and this question of proof is tied down to the special kind
of proof which is popular today. Anyone who rightly
understands this kind of proof knows that it applies only to
truths connected with things in the universe which are in the
process of dying. Therefore the only science or knowledge
desired in the present age is concerned with what is dying
and perishing — especially so in the case of those who
claim to be the most enlightened. They welcome only a will
bent in that direction. If we are not conscious of this, we
are really preferring — in the widest sense of the
words — to deal only with what is passing away. We lack
the courage to think in terms of growing, becoming, for what
is growing refuses to be grasped with the narrow, limited
conceptions capable of being “proved”, which are
suitable for what is passing away. So people protect
themselves against the reproaches which are really implicit
in what I have just pointed out.

To speak
against these things, as one must do, involves the danger of
incurring the reproach of frightful fantasy, dilettantism, or
perhaps even worse. Conceptions are sought which protect
people from the obligation of thinking about anything
fruitful, or endowed with seeds of life for the future.
One idea, according to this view, must be received
by those who hold themselves to be among the really
intelligent leaders of thought: the idea of “the
conservation of matter and energy” as understood at the
present time. Quite comprehensibly, everyone is adjudged to
be a duffer who does not admit this indestructibility of
force and matter to be a truth underlying the whole of
science. Yet it is a fact that if we sound the depths of a
real view of the universe, what we call matter and force are
perishable and transitory; and all science, all knowledge
attainable on the subject, our investigations into the
transitory. Because it is insisted that science has to be
concerned with that, and that only, it is dogmatically
asserted that something solid, something permanent and there
must be: either matter — In spite of its being
transitory — or energy. This law of the permanence of
matter and energy plays a great part even for those who are
not concerned to analyze it scientifically; such a part that
is clothes everything with mystery. Our scientific education
is such that the dregs of opinion on the subject of the
conservation of matter and energy penetrate our popular
literature and are treated by the ordinary reader as
something obvious.

Now we know,
through a cold science, of the Saturn, Sun, Moon and
Earth-developments. Nothing of what is now called matter and
energy will pass beyond the Venus evolution. Hence the most
lasting kind of matter, that which reaches Venus, will then
come to an end. We have just passed the middle of our
world-evolution, as we view it, and are in the fifth period
of the earth-evolution, beyond the middle of that; and we are
already living in the setting.: that is, in the time of
devolution, in which the vanishing of matter and energy comes
to pass. The right you take as we studied physics and
chemistry would be this — that the knowledge acquired
through these sciences bears only upon the transitory, which
at latest will disappear from the universe with the
Venus-stage. In the whole purview the present-day science
there is nothing which deals with the permanent; because by
means of the ideas and concepts that can be
“proved” in a manner favored today, it is
impossible to discover only what in this sense is transitory.
Man moves only in the transitory.

An essential
reform is necessary in our ideas concerning this most
essential sphere, and those who consider themselves
particularly scientific have the most to learn before they
can replace their current notions with correct ones. —
Now why am I saying this, seeing that the matter in its
general bearing may not perhaps seem particularly
important?

It really
is important, because according to the concepts
which men assimilate in the way I have described, other
concepts are formed in conformity with which they
will; they direct their will-power. From the mode of
thought thus acquired are begotten social and political
concepts. These latter shape themselves in accordance with
the characteristic use made of such forces — a use
consisting in this, that only the transitory is dealt with in
such conceptions, and this habit spreads into ideas concerned
with the living. This crops up in a particularly striking way
as we look at the main points of the programms put forth by
many who confidently regard themselves as the very last word
in advanced thought. For instance, the schemes of many
Socialists, very much in the public eye nowadays, all more or
less adopt the theory of Karl Marx as a starting-point. This
theory is the calamity of Russia two-day, because — for
reasons I explained last time — what happens there
according to historical premises can ensue elsewhere from
Marxism. This way of looking at things is an extreme form of
the determination to deal only with transitory. Anyone who
familiarizes himself with the ideas of this school knows that
the fanatical adherents of Marxism imagine themselves to be
possessed of the ideas of the future, whereas they have only
such as are directed to the transitory. This stands out
naïvely in the so-called socialist view of life, for
throughout it refuses admittance to ideas with a fruitful
bearing on the future. It preaches the blessing of having
none! The formula is repeated in many different ways: —
Get rid of everything at present existing; then, of itself,
without any reflection on the matter, something will result
from the welter. This is unequivocally stated. But although
it comes from the looks of those who have been brought up in
Church doctrines for centuries and who do nothing but trace
the events of the last centuries according to the Church,
they must nevertheless say the following. — In truth
this view refuses to entertain ideas with any germ of life in
them: the only ones it admits are concerned with what is
passing away; and the only effect of these ideas is to
complete the process of destruction. Men believe they possess
productive thoughts; that is all to no purpose unless the
concepts are rooted in reality. These ideas are useless for
establishing anything new; all they can accomplish is to turn
destruction into an institution. This Socialism seems to me
like a lady (a bygone person to-day) who cannot endure a
crinoline. She hates the wide skirt and wants to alter it.
But what does she do? She pads it out; so that it looks just
as before, but is a stuffed out with wadding inside. Just so
these Socialists: they never think of fertilizing what
history has achieved with new concepts; they leave it alone
— and themselves take the place of the former
administrators. They hang on to the crinoline, but stuff it
out. Look even at extremist views — they are simply a
longing to administer what is perishing and dying out! To
what is this due?

It is due to
the fact that with the concepts of present-day science,
concerned merely with things of the senses, based on the
intellect, taking account only of material perception, all
that one can encounter is the transitory, not the living.
Only what is already dying can be grasped; nothing that is
seed-bearing, growing. For the germinating, growing element
must be grasped at least through Imagination, the
first stage of higher knowledge; as described, for instance,
in the book,
“Knowledge of Higher Worlds.”
And to attain to still higher knowledge of the
“becoming” — Inspiration and Intuition must
be applied. Those who approach such things with the outfit of
ideas held hitherto may talk as much as they wish — they
are only talking of laws which apply to what is on the way to
destruction, unless they let themselves admit what
super-sensible knowledge alone can reveal as the
“becoming”. Things too-they are on a razor's
edge. It is impossible to know anything on certain subjects,
and civilization must fall into chaos if we are satisfied to
live in it without admitting any vision of the spiritual.

What we need,
and what is striven for through Spiritual Science, is a sort
of revival of the Mysteries, in a form adapted to the modern
mind. Unless we understand the meaning of the ancient
mysteries, we shall not fathom the meaning of the epoch which
is intermediate between them and what must come as the new
form of the Mysteries. Comprehension of all this is
necessary. The most startling experience for the pupils of
the old Mysteries was to be shown clearly how the old
atavistic, clairvoyant, hidden knowledge was doomed to
extinction. This could not be grasped by observation, it had
to be revealed in the Mysteries, where people were shown that
something different from the old clairvoyant vision into the
Spiritual World's was destined to become man's possession.
There it was disclosed to the pupils of the Mysteries that
this old capacity of the human soul, this vision of cosmic
expanses in Imaginations, was dedicated to death. This was
made them somewhat in the following way. — What can be
perceived by physical senses on earth is not the content of
the genuine Mysteries of the earth-existence; this is
revealed only when the human soul ascends in the clairvoyant
contemplation to Mysteries of the cosmos, of the
super-earthly, and the cosmic events beyond the sphere of
earth, unfold before it. — The ancient seers grasped
all that, but not what happened on earth. The pupils of the
tapestries were shown depth knowledge of that type, ascending
into the Cosmos, would no longer be possible; and still more
was disclosed to those who were to penetrate into the
Christ-Mystery.

Something like
this conception came to them: “Although the old seers
did not speak of ‘the Christ,’ their inspirations
came from the world in which Christ always was, for He is a
Cosmic Being. He dwells in everything Cosmic and universal,
in the whole content of man's old atavistic clairvoyant
vision; but from the time when the Mystery of Golgotha is due
to be enacted, all this will be no longer accessible to
mankind in the old way.”

What happened?
The Christ descended from the world of the cosmos to the
earth. Because the cosmos was no longer accessible to men as
in ancient times, because Christ was no longer to be found in
the old way, because the kind of knowledge and state of soul
with which men had formerly looked at the world was dying
out, but Christ had to come down to them. He came to the
earth. Everything, therefore, which enlightened spirits had
ever known of the spiritual world in ancient times through
the pagan tapestries and through pagan Mystery-knowledge, was
summed up in the Christ, and could be beheld in Him. The one
all-important thing was to recognize the Cosmic Being, Who in
Christ descended to the earth from the cosmos. That was one
point.

The other was
this. Remember that through the intellect and of the senses
only the transitory can be observed in all the array of
systems, whether of nature, of social structures or of
civilizations, and that transitory knowledge will endure no
farther than the Venus-existence. But learned men, believing
that their ideas point to the future, are very often immersed
in what is passing away. And what the senses perceive and the
intellect grasps there is no seed of the future; all of it is
doomed to perish. If the only knowledge were concerned with
that, there would be nothing but knowledge of death; because
the actuality which surrounds us is itself doomed to death.
Where shall we find the “enduring”? Where is the
imperishable which shall outlast this existence, apparently
permanent but doomed to die? While Adamson forces, to which
materialistic superstition attributes permanence, betray
their impermanence and fall to ruin, where is the
imperishable to be found?

In man alone!
Amongst all the beings, animals, plants, minerals, air,
water, and everything that parishes, there is but one thing
which will outlast the Earth-evolution and the evolution to
follow it — that which lives in man himself. Man alone
on earth bears within him an enduring element. One cannot
speak of the permanence of atoms, matter, force, but only of
the permanence of something in Man. This, however, can be
seen only through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. All
else, perceived by our vision, is fleeting. The material, the
physical, is entirely transient; the super-sensible, which
outlives it, can be perceived only by super-sensible vision.
In man, as he treads the earth, lies all that will be saved
out of the entire Earth-existence. If we asked: “Where
is the germ of something which will continue to grow on after
the Earth, Jupiter, and Venus developments — from the
present civilization into the future?” The answer must
be: “In nothing external on earth; only in man”.
In the part of his being accessible only to super-sensible
knowledge, man is the cradle of the seed for the future. Only
someone who is willing to include the super-sensible in his
view is able to speak correctly of the future; otherwise he
must err. Thus the Christ, dissenting from worlds becoming
more and more inaccessible to human knowledge, had unite
Himself with Mankind — to take up His abode in Jesus of
Nazareth and become Christ-Jesus, so that in a human body
there might well that which bears within it the future of the
Earth-development. So we have in Christ the Cosmic Being,
that Cosmic Being whom ancient knowledge alone could grasp
directly; and in the Jesus to whom the Christ came, we have
what henceforth bears within it, inhuman will alone, the seed
for the future. He cannot be comprehended purely as
“Christ”, nor as “Jesus”. To speak of
the “Christ” only, is not to comprehend Him; for
the “Christ” of — for example — the
old Docetics (a certain sect of Gnostics) belongs to the old
atavistic clairvoyance and can no longer be laid hold of. And
“Jesus” cannot be understood without taking into
account the Christ Who drew into him. Unless we give due
weight to this fact of the Christ in Jesus, we cannot grasp
that only through the human seed on earth can the cosmic be
saved for the future.

To understand
how far Christ-Jesus is this double Being is a great task;
but at the same time many have taken pains to create
obstacles to such an understanding. In modern times it has
been a question of inducing forgetfulness of indwelling of
Christ in Jesus by all sorts of means. On one hand there is
the extreme theological teaching which only and always speaks
of “the simple man of Nazareth”, the man of
physical nature, not of that Man who has in himself the seed
for the future. Further, there is the Society founded to
combat the Christ, and with that came to set up a false
picture of Jesus: the Jesuit Society, which virtually aims at
testing out the Christ-concept from the Christ-Jesus concept,
and to install Jesus alone as an absolute ruler of
developing humanity. We must see the connection of all this,
for the different impulses here pointed out work and
present-day life more than is supposed, and very intensely.
Without open eyes and a longing to understand the concrete
events around one, it is impossible not to be taken by
surprise by what happens; a clearer view of such things as I
have mentioned will be lacking. Our own time is in many
respects too indolent to wish to achieve clarity; the
concepts of Spiritual Science are too hard to compass, and
are stigmatized status dilettante, unscientific, fantastic
and the like. They are condemned for the reason, I have
mentioned, because of the determination to take no account of
what is really significant for the future.

Thus we see
around us to-day this dreary waste in the midst of the chaos
into which the old religious creeds and currents of thought
have led. Within this chaos, which people with curious
supposed to call “war” (a work which has ceased
to be applicable for a long time now), we see an array of
lifeless, barren thoughts and ideas, because fertile ones can
come only from comprehension of the super-sensible, the
spiritual. Man two-day has to choose between cultivating the
vanishing, the dying, ending by becoming a pupil of Lenin
— it's taking into account the super-sensible, wherein
abides what has to come in the future. I am not referring
simply to the London works his mischief now in Eastern Europe
— I taken more as a symbol, for we have many such
Lenins around us and the whole environment of our daily life,
in one domain or another. Yet the world refuses to take in
hand anything except what is dying.

Remember
something I once pointed out here, ‘the plant
lives,’ I said; it can be described as a living being.
But what does ordinary science describe as the plant? Not
what lives in it, for that of super-sensible; but the
dead, literal part of it, which “fills out” the
living element. We find nothing else described by modern
science but the mineral filling of the living being, which
brings death to it. Genuinely fruitful concepts regarding
nature are consequently unattainable to-day. The concepts of
present-day botany have no life. All that they describe as
something filled out with a stony mineral substance, which
circulates inside. That can be described equally well in the
animal and in man. All three kingdoms become entirely
different as soon as one gets away from this circulating
mineral substance.

For instance, a
certain Herr Uexküll has written an article on
“The Controversy about the Animal Soul”.
He is possessed by masochistic savagery as regards all knowledge
of the soul, or anything that suggests it. I said
“masochistic savagery” because in this article he
writes: “It is impossible to decide whether a soul
exists or not: all that can be decided is that science can
settle nothing on the subject” — an ordinary
savage kills; but anyone who is masochistically savage, like
this Herr von Uexküll, only “probes” the
dead and makes sneering remarks. That is thoroughly typical
of modern science; but it is not noticed, because nobody
wants to admit it. People refuse to breakthrough the dividing
wall between themselves and their environment; hence they
cannot reach the ideas they really need in order to learn
once more how to understand their environment.

We know from
spiritual science that the essential being of man, the kernel
of his life, descends from the spiritual worlds, and unites
itself with what surrounds him as a bodily-material chief
between birth and death, or rather between conception and
death. The problems of conception, of birth, of embryology,
are investigated to-day; but they cannot be truly
investigated, because the research is directed only to the
dead part of man, which is embedded in the living. This path
will never lead to a grasp of what alone can make the human
being understandable. When Man the Suns in this way from the
spiritual world, he is “received” by father and
mother, and goes through all the stages of his embryonic
development. Science two-day assumes that the parents give
the child existence; and since father and mother are the
center of the family, and the family is the foundation of the
community, therefore the communities, which are extended
families, consider men as their own property. Thus a galling
idea is brought into modern life — but it is not really
true.

What, then,
does the act of conception bestow upon man? What does he
gain? A Spiritual Science shows, what he receives is the
possibility of becoming a mortal being — of
dying. You will see, if you think of what is to be found in
my various books, that it is the necessary consequence. With
conception there is implanted in man what makes his death
possible here on earth. The whole of life from birth is a
development towards death, and the seed of death is implanted
at conception. What man is as “man”, as a living
being, is not by any means engendered at conception; but the
possibility of death is thereby grafted onto what would
otherwise be immortal. Parents are called to give death of a
child! That is the paradox — they give it a opportunity
of bearing a mortal body on earth. What lives in that body
comes from the spiritual world. This is what makes the
organism — the whole mechanism with which man is
clothed and which was received by him with seed of death at
conception — capable of life. We must learn to
recognize man in his most concrete embodiment as a part of
spiritual world-development. Then we shall learn not to stand
before the loftiest problems with cowardly fear, past
present-day science does, but to grasp them positively. If we
shrink back from them, we shall fail to understand even our
immediate environment.

Round about us
to-day, live the most varied peoples. Just think of the
incorrect ideas, for example, created by Woodrow Wilson out
of his conception of nations and the peoples — a theme
with which you are familiar. We must be quite clear that we
cannot understand this conception of the people unless we
take in the whole of earth-evolution. Whence comes, then, a
division of humanity into “peoples”? We know from
Spiritual Science of evolution proceeded through a
Saturn-embodiment of the Earth, then the Sun-embodiment, with
the ancient Moon following that, and then the present
Earth-condition; afterwards will come a Jupiter-embodiment,
and so forth. The course of evolution, however, was not so
straightforward that the old Saturn-body simply changed into
Sun, Moon, Earth; at one time a severance of the present Sun
from the Earth took place, then a severance of the present
Moon, so that we have a continuous evolution, and something
which was cut off reunited, and once again severed. A
connection with what I have just called “Cosmic
Evolution” this severance plates part in the old
clairvoyance. And for the old clairvoyance the human seed the
future remained “chthonic”, as it was called in
the old clairvoyance is, quite unconscious. For what comes
from the universe was destined to decay; it was maintained
only because it had come under the grip of the Luciferic
power. In this way, out of the cosmos reform the many
variations in the nations and peoples, but the cosmic forces
were impregnated with Luciferic forces. Over against these
diverse peoples stand something which was understood in a
better time than this — universal humanity. It has a
totally different origin. It may be discussed in the
abstract, but can be truly spoken of only as one genuinely
understands what the seed of the future in humanity is . It
has no taint of Nation or peoples; for it is that which did
not come down from the Cosmos but which the Christ came to
find, and with which He indicted Himself. Christ, unlike the
Jehovah-Deity, United Himself with no nation but with
universal humanity. He was in the confraternity of those Gods
from whom the nations took their rise, but He left that realm
when it was ready to pass away; He came to earth and took up
His abode in humanity at large. When we say, “Not I but
Christ in us”, it is the greatest blasphemy against
Christ-Jesus to invoke Him for any need other than that of
universal humanity.

A grasp of this
fact belongs to the most momentous concepts for the future.
We must perceive the connection of Christ Jesus with
humanity, and also how everything purely national lies
outside the realm of Christ-Jesus, for it is the ancient
remains of what was right for extinction at the time of the
Mystery of Golgotha. Yet, as we see withered fruit in the
orchards, so do all things linger on after their right time.
So we were bound to get the science which is concerned only
with knowledge of what is on the way to extinction, and which
— whether it be natural science or social science
— deals and ideas that apply only to the transient, in
nature or in cultural life. Often in the history of
civilization one can see the conflict between the tendency to
cling to what is passing away, and to present as important
the dead, abstract ideas connected with it, and the wish to
grasp that germinal essence of humanity which alone is
pregnant of the future. I have often referred to the
significant conversation between Goethe and Schiller when
both were in Jena for a conference of a natural history
society, at which Batsch the botanist had lectured on plants.
As they left, Schiller said to Goethe, “The botanist's
outlook dismembers everything; it ignores the connecting
links”. Goethe, in a few descriptive sentences, put
before Schiller his “Metamorphosis” of plants,
but the latter said, “That is not an experience more
observation — it is an idea.” To which Goethe
answered “Then I see my ideas with my very eyes.”
What he had been describing was visible to him, as real as a
thing perceptible by physical senses. They confronted one
another — Schiller, representative of the mind unable
to look up to the spiritual, bemused by dead, abstract ideas;
and Goethe, who wished to derive from knowledge of nature
what is imperishable, vital for the future, the imperishable
in humanity, of which all that is transient is merely an
image. He wanted to unite the transient with its archetype,
the real. He was not understood, for he looked on the
super-sensible, the imperishable, as though it were
perceptible to the senses. Thus the urgent need of our time
is that Goethe's teaching should be more widely developed and
further elaborated in its own sphere. Then things will become
clearer, and we shall see that the particular creeds, whether
Jewish, or more particularly the Catholic, are only the
presuppositions of what is old and outworn, standing out in
evolution as parched remnants, supported only from outside;
and that side-by-side with these, interpenetrating them,
stands Americanism, which wishes to carry the transient into
the future. Therein lies the kinship between Americanism and
Jesuitism, of which I spoke last time.

Standing in
opposition to all this is Goetheanism. By this I do not mean
anything dogmatically fixed, for we have to use names for
things which far transcend them. By “Goetheanism”
I do not mean what Goethe brought up to 1832, but what will
perhaps be thought in the next millennium in the spirit of
Goethe; which may develop out of Goethe's views, concepts and
sentiments. It may be concluded, therefore, that in
everything connected with Goetheanism, outworn beliefs sees
its particular any. The most extreme paradoxes are to be
found in this sphere. It really is a paradox to find that the
cleverest book about Goethe whatever may be said to the
contrary — has been written by Jesuit, Father
Baumgarten. No details concerning him is neglected. The usual
distinguishing mark of Jesuit work on the subject is
hostility to Goethe: but this is a highly intelligent,
painstaking book, not superficially written. Yet it has
happened to Goethe to be portrayed as an ordinary citizen of
the 18th century, born in 1749 at Frankfort-on-the-Main, who
studied at Leipzig, was given a post in Weimar, traveled in
Italy, live to be old, was incorrectly called it on both came
good to
“Johann Wolfgang Goethe;”
this was how he was described in the work of a distinguished
English Gentleman, Lewes — which was much admired. A book
headed
“Johann Wolfgang Goethe,”
describing him
as an ordinary 18th-century citizen, is no real book. A
cultural paradox lies in the Jesuit's book on Goethe for the
trend of opposing forces in modern times can be seen in it,
and where the real ones are to be found.

A small way it
shows itself amongst us. So long as we were reckoned a
“hidden sect”, Anthroposophy was seldom attacked;
but when it began to spread a little, virulent attacks began,
especially from the Jesuits; and the Journal, “Voices
from Maria Leach”, now called “Voices of the
Time”, is not content with one article, but contains a
whole series about what I've called Anthroposophy. I must
warn you, again and again, attacks come from this side, not
to believe that from the point of view of these writers, it
is for our good when they say that we “speak of the
Christ”, or that we “promote understanding of
Christ”. They forbid that everything; it is exactly
what must not be done; outside the doctrines of the
Church, there must be no assertion about the Christ! No-one
in our circles need be so naïve as to believe that by
being a good Christian, he can propitiate the Church. Just
because he is a good Christian, and does all in his power to
advance Christianity, he arrays Catholicism against him as a
supreme enemy. It becomes more and more necessary to take
care that naïveté in these contemporary matters
should disappear from amongst us. We must more and more
firmly determined to realize what is active in the forces
around us, whether they be in the ascendant or are declining.
We must get beyond the longing, present among us in so many
forms, simply to penetrate a little way into an imaginative
world. I have often said that we must above all be able to
place our Spiritual Science alongside modern concepts, and
bring keen observation to bear on life as it is in the
present age; because to gain true insight into this is
possible only from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

How many people
come to me and say, “I have seen this or that”.
Well they may well have done so. Imaginations are not so very
distant. “Was that the Guardian of the
Threshold?” many then ask. A simple yes and no does not
answer questions on such matters, because the answers involve
the whole of human development. But the answers are
given. I am now correcting my
Occult Science,
for a new edition. I see that in it may be found everything
necessary for the answering of such questions. Every
precaution, every limitation to be observed is exactly
described; the feelings to be developed, the experiences to
be undergone, are all set forth. To elaborate the whole
content of Spiritual Science would have required 30 volumes.
This one must be read carefully, drawing the necessary
conclusions — and it can be done. I do not like writing
thick books. But read attentively and it will be found that
this book indicates clearly that he endeavors to enter the
super-sensible world strides towards meeting the Guardian of
the Threshold; but the meeting is not so simple a matter as
to have a dreamlike imagination. The latter, of course, is
the easiest method of entering that world. The meeting with
the Guardian of the Threshold is fraught with
tragedy; it is a vital conflict as regards all
intellectual concepts and laws, all man's connections with
this virtual world and with Ahriman and Lucifer. This
life-and-death struggle must be endured by him who would meet
the Guardian of the Threshold. Should this experience come to
a man merely as a dreamlike imagination, it means that, he
wants to slip through comfortably, so as to have a
dream out of the Guardian of the Threshold as a
substitute — nowadays people are fond of substitutes
the commission! — for the real thing.

We must think
healthily on the subjects; and it will then become evident
that healthy thinking can alone provide the basis of a remedy
against all superstition, and against all the charges made by
superficial opponents of Spiritual Science. Moreover, in this
kind of thinking, in this raising oneself to experience on
the spiritual, lie all the necessary seeds for finding the
real way out of the present world-catastrophe.

The layout must
be grasped — not in the realm of the earth and senses,
not in institutions which are mismanaged and sucking the life
out of what exists. The thing to be grasped does not
exist! We must be stirred with burning zeal for the top
attention of what does not yet exist!

This
non-existent thing can be grasped only according to the
pattern given by super-sensible knowledge. It cannot be
grasped by looking into the past. Such men as Kautsky prefer
to look back into the past, finding and
“Anthropology” the ground-plan of mankind. They
tried to study conditions at a time when man was hardly yet
created in order to understand the social connections of
to-day. These two sons of a misconceived Catholicism, such as
Kautsky, want to have it so. But one cannot look back to the
past, because in the past, those things which have extended
into the very latest present, were created by means of
atavistic forces, instinctively. In the future, nothing more
will be achieved “instinctively”, and if man
holds only to the products of ages of instinct, he will never
attain to what bears the future within it, and can lead out
of this catastrophe. An active, earnest understanding of the
present depends entirely upon a right attitude to the
spiritual world.

I should have
to say much if, continuing in this strain, I were to speak to
you about many things closely related to this present time.
Yet if, in the weeks while we are separated, you will bring
rightly be for your souls what has been said in these
lectures, and which should culminate in realizing the
necessity for knowledge of the twofold figure of Christ
Jesus, you will go far this summer in meditative
comprehension of the cosmic Christ and the earthly Jesus;
remembering that the cosmic Christ descended from the
spiritual worlds because these worlds were henceforth to be
closed to man's view, and that man must apprehend what lies
within him as the seed of the future. In the cosmic Christ
and the earthly human Jesus and their union, lies much of the
solution of the riddle of the world — at least of the
riddle of humanity. In man lies the seed of future; but it
must be fructified by Jesus. If it is not so
fructified, it will assume an Ahrimanic form, and the earth
will end in chaos. In short, in connection with the Mystery
of Christ-Jesus we can find a solution of many, many
questions to-day; that we must endeavor so to seek these
solutions as not to be lightly contented with what is so
often taken for “Theosophy” or
“Mysticism”or the like — a “Union
with a spiritual”, and “entire absorption in the
all” — We must really visualize the true
conditions surrounding us, and try to permit them with what
we gain from Spiritual Science. We shall then say to
ourselves over and over again, with regard to the answers to
many questions: truly man today is seeking for something very
practical, not merely theoretical; he will find himself in a
blind alley in which he can go no further, if he does not go
with the spirit. Everything which does not go forward with
the spirit will wither away.

This is a
weighty question for the future of mankind. Has man the will
to journey with the spirit? I would fain impress this on your
hearts today as the feeling which can arise from the
reflections we have pursued.

Probably we are
meeting to-day for the last time in this room, which we used
so gladly for years as a place for our studies. It was one of
the first to be arranged in keeping with our own taste, and
one can only work according to the opportunities that exist.
We fitted it up as we did because we were always convinced
that endeavors on behalf of spiritual Science ought not to be
mere theory but should be expressed in everything wherein we
meet as human beings. The room is now to be taken from us and
we must look for another. Obviously, under present
conditions, we shall not be able to fit it up as we did this
room, but we must be content with it. This room has become
dear to us, for we have come to regard it as impossible to
speak elsewhere of our relations with the spiritual as we can
in this place, where in many ways we have tried to do the
same things that are being attempted in Dornach on a larger
scale. In times gone by we had to try all sorts of
arrangements. Perhaps there are still a few here who were
present when we had to speak in a beer-shop; I stood there,
facing the audience, while behind me the landlord or landlady
filled beer-mugs. Another time we were in a room like a
stable: we had booked another, but that was all they gave us.
In other towns I have lectured in places with no boards on
the floor, and that too had to be put up with; it is not
exactly what could be wished for as an outcome of our
movement, and it would be a misunderstanding if it were said
that we would just as soon speak of spiritual things in
any surroundings. The spirit's task is to penetrate
into matter, and to permeate it completely. That is the sense
in which I have been speaking of social and scientific life
to-day.

For all these
reasons it will certainly be very hard part in a few weeks
from this room, which was fitted up so devotedly with the
help of our anthroposophical friends; but we must look upon
such a parting in the right way, as a symbol. People will be
obliged to part from much in the course of the next few
decades. They will be taken by surprise, although they do not
believe it. One thing will be deeply rooted in those who have
grasped the deepest impulse of Spiritual Science. Whatever
may be spoken, this cannot be shaken, and that is what we
have grasped in the spirit, and what we have determined to do
and accomplish in the spirit. No matter how chaotic
everything looks, that will show itself to be the right
thing.

So many leaving
this place is symbol for us. We must move into another, but
we carried away with us something of which we know that it is
not simply our own deepest inner being, at the deepest inner
being of the world, of which man must build if he would build
a right. He who stands within Virtual Science is convinced
that no one can take away, either from us or from humanity,
what we have accomplished through it, and that it must lead
to human affairs to a healthy condition ; this he knows, to
this he clings. We may not as yet be able to say how we shall
accomplish many things; but we may be sure that we shall
accomplish them rightfully if we steep ourselves in the
knowledge of what Goetheanism signifies for Spiritual
Science, and if on the other hand we accept what has recently
been mentioned here — that's the world stigmatizes and
defames all that is connected with Mid-European civilization
of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and that we, bringing
all this before our souls, can nevertheless take our stand on
our sure convictions: whatever happens, this Mid-European
culture will be fruitful for the future of mankind, which
indeed depends upon it. To save their own faces, because they
have no wish for this feature of mankind, the opponents of
this particular culture defame it; but let us grasp it in the
spirit, recognize its inner spiritual content, knowing that
we can build upon it. Then we shall be sure that though all
devilish powers vow its destruction, yet it will not be
destroyed! But only that can escape destruction which is
united with the genuine spirit!